Just as Mrs. Joe realizes that the meat pie that Pip has
stolen is gone, a file of soldiers arrive at the Gargery door. The sergeant asks for
the blacksmith because he has leg-irons that need repair. So, after a couple of hours,
Joe has them repaired and the soldiers with their loaded muskets set out for the escaped
convicts that they are hunting. Into the "dismal wilderness" of wind and rain and
coarse rushes and banks and marshes the soldiers search for the man who has filed the
leg-irons. They know that the convicts will wait for dusk before they try to escape
from the cover of the marshes for fear of being shot by the
soldiers.
As the soldiers traverse this wetland where the
footing is bad with the wind and sleet persecuting them, some of them hear water
splashing and curses being uttered. The sergeant runs in, followed by other soldiers
with their muskets cocked. "Here are both men!" the sergeant calls to the others
ordering the convicts to surrender. As they stop, Pip's convict tells the
sergeant,
Lookee here!”.... “Single-handed I got clear of
the prison-ship; I made a dash and I done it. I could ha' got clear of these death-cold
flats likewise—look at my leg: you won't find much iron on it—if I hadn't made the
discovery that he was here. Let him go free?
Let him profit by the means as I found out? Let
him make a tool of me afresh and again? Once more? No, no, no. If I
had died at the bottom there;” and he made an emphatic swing at the ditch with his
manacled hands; “I'd have held to him with that grip, that you should have been safe to
find him in my hold."
Then,
the convict explains that he could have escaped, but he was not about to let the second
convict get away, too, just so that he could implicate Pip's convict if he got
caught. He tells the soldiers that the second convict is a villain whom he has refused
to let go. Clearly, there is great hatred for this convict on the part of Pip's
convict.
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